A federal audit shows that nearly a half-billion dollars in government funds was spent on training workers for so-called “green jobs.” The only problem is that not enough positions in the growing industry exist.

The findings — released in a June report by the Government Accountability Office — showed that only 55 percent of those trained were able to place in a new job, many of which were not technically green jobs. The $501 million in funding came from the 2009 stimulus law. The report also uncovered that the Department of Labor created a framework that led grantees to broadly interpret the program’s definition to include any job “that could be linked, directly or indirectly, to a beneficial outcome” which led to the gap between training programs and available green industry jobs.

“Our report suggests that the department identifies the lessons learned,” Andrew Sherrill, a spokesperson for the GAO, told FoxNews.com. “A lot of these programs were created before there were clear job definitions for the industry.”

Sherrill adds that other factors contributed, such as the recession hitting around the same time as the grant program and trainees having to compete with unemployed, skilled tradesmen looking for new work.

So, in reality, this wasn’t even a “green jobs” program and it still failed.